Review: Statement of Regret
Madhvi Ramani reviews Kwame Kwei-Armah’s newest production on black British identity at the National Theatre, Statement of Regret.
Kwame Kwei-Armah’s Statement of Regret, the final part of his triptych for the National Theatre, is about the past and its effect on contemporary black British identity.
The drama is set in a black political think tank whose founder Kwaku Mackenzie, played with candour by Don Warrington (Rising Damp), is filled with grief over the recent death of his father.
As Kwaku increasingly hits the rum bottle, his appearance becomes ever more dishevelled and his unifying leadership of the think tank disintegrates. His decline culminates at the end of the first half in a drunken TV appearance during which he states that “black people should be more racist” and only those of Caribbean descent should be awarded reparations for slavery.
This divisive stance has disastrous consequences. Cracks and fissions widen among the all-black staff of the think tank, and the once ordered office turns into a place of toppled chairs and strewn papers.
Like Roy Williams’ Joe Guy , which has just finished a run at Soho Theatre, the play highlights the tensions between UK Africans and West Indians. The complexities of the term ‘black’ become furthermore apparent as the staff verbalise about other divides such as sex, class and sexual orientation.
This is provocative political theatre, inspired as it was by Tony Blair’s statement of regret for Britain’s involvement in the slave trade along with American academic Joy Leary’s theory of ‘post-traumatic slave syndrome’, which argues that black people still suffer feelings of inferiority and helplessness as a result of slavery.
The hostile history between British blacks, with Africans perceiving West Indians as cultureless and West Indians thinking the Africans savage, can be traced to first generation immigrants and beyond, to hundreds of years of slavery and colonialism.
It is this unshakable past that hangs heavy around the neck of the think tank staff (and the wider black community) like an albatross, preventing them from moving on. This inescapable effect of the past is aptly expressed when Junior, Kwaku’s son, says, “This is how they got us to sell each other in the first place… told one tribe they were better than the other.”
What is most arresting and engaging about this play, however, is its exploration into how the past affects personal, rather than political, identity. Kwaku is a man, quite literally, haunted by the past. He is filled with regret over his fall out with his father, which remains unresolved due to his death. Kwaku’s inability to overcome his grief makes him a man divided, eventually leading him to suffer a form of schizophrenia.
The other characters too, are affected the past. As their individual insecurities worsen during the course of play, they become child-like, retorting to the playground taunts of their school days.
However, these characters and their relationships are not given enough room to breathe because their personal motives are outweighed by their political ones. As a result, they feel underdeveloped. For example, we are never able to understand the affair between Kwaku and researcher Issimama (Angel Coulby) , or grasp the issues behind Idrissa’s homosexuality.
At times the play overflows with wordiness and political jargon, and although this does serve to highlight the socio-political complexities of the issue of black identity, it feels tiresome, didactic, and worse, detracts from the drama.
Ultimately, the play raises more questions than it answers – but the fact that it is daring enough to raise such difficult questions in the first place makes it a stimulating watch.
Statement of Regret is on at the Cottesloe Theatre at the National until 6 February 2008.